Barack Obama, a 47-year-old first-term senator from Illinois, shattered more than 200 years of history Tuesday night by winning election as the first African-American president of the United States, according to projections by NBC News.

Obama reached the 270 electoral votes he needed for election at 11 p.m. ET, when NBC News projected that he would win California, Washington and Oregon.

Obama’s opponent, Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, said he had called Obama to offer his congratulations. Addressing supporters in Phoenix, he said, “The American people have spoken, and they have spoken clearly.”

McCain said he “recognized the special significance” Obama’s victory had for African-Americans.

“We both recognize that though we have come a long way from the old injustices that once stained our nation’s reputation and denied some Americans the full blessings of American citizenship, the memory of them still have the power to wound,” McCain said.

“Let there be no reason for any American to fail to cherish their citizenship in this, the greatest nation on Earth,” said McCain, who pledged his support and help for the new president.

Tens of thousands await ObamaA crowd nearing 100,000 people gathered in Grant Park in Chicago, awaiting an address by Obama. Hundreds of thousands more — Mayor Richard Daley said he would not be surprised if a million Chicagoans jammed the streets — were watching on a large television screen outside the park.

Obama’s election was a broad one. He won Florida, the scene of so much electoral chaos in recent elections. He won Ohio, a key to President Bush’s two election wins. He won Colorado, home of the religious right. And he won Virginia, reversing 40 years of Republican victories there.

Surveys of voters as they left polling places nationwide encapsulated the historic nature of the victory by Obama, the son of a Kenyan father and a white American mother. As expected, he won overwhelmingly among African-American voters, but he also won a slim majority of white voters. He won among women and Latino voters, reversing a longstanding Republican trend. And he won by more than 2-to-1 among voters of all races 30 years old and younger.

That dynamic was telling in Ohio and in Pennsylvania, where McCain poured in millions of dollars of scarce resources. Obama won both, along with Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey and New York, all states with hefty electoral vote hauls, NBC News projected.

McCain countered with Texas and numerous smaller states, primarily in the South and the Great Plains.

In interviews with NBC News, aides to McCain said they were proud that they had put up a good fight in “historically difficult times.”

A senior adviser said McCain himself was “fine” but that he felt “he let his staff and supporters down.”

Obama will have a strongly Democratic Congress on the other end of Capitol Hill. The Democrats won strong majorities in both the House and the Senate. NBC News projected that the party would fall just short of a procedurally important 60 percent “supermajority” in the Senate, however.

Record turnout delays key resultsIn the end, Florida, the scene of electoral chaos in recent elections, had little impact. Florida had been closely watched, but results there and in other closely contested states were delayed until after Obama clinched his victory as record numbers of voters flocked to polling stations, energized by an election in which they would select either the nation’s first black president or its first female vice president.

Obama, who led in nearly all public opinion polls, and McCain both launched get-out-the-vote efforts that led to long lines at polling stations in a contest that Democrats were also hoping would help them expand their majorities in both houses of Congress.

Americans voted in numbers unprecedented since women were given the franchise in 1920. Secretaries of state predicted turnouts approaching 90 percent in Virginia and Colorado and 80 percent or more in big states like Ohio, California, Texas, Virginia, Missouri and Maryland.

At New Shiloh Church Ministries on Mastin Lake in Huntsville, Ala., Stephanie Lacy-Conerly brought along a chair, expecting to stay for hours.

“It’s exciting,” she said. “It’s an historical moment.”

Election officials around the country braced for problems, but only minor issues were reported. However, the McCain campaign filed suit in Virginia, home to several major military bases, complaining that absentee ballots were not mailed on time to many members of the military serving overseas.

History played down in favor of issuesVoters were lured to the polls by an election with the potential to make history. Both campaigns played down the historic nature of their tickets, however, preferring to emphasize what they offered as plans to bring sweeping change to Washington and close the door on the two-term presidency of George W. Bush, whose approval ratings are near historic lows.

Election experts predicted that as many as 140 million Americans would vote, many of them minority, immigrant and young Americans who were casting ballots for the first time.

Maria Reyes, who immigrated from El Salvador and was sworn in as a citizen in August, was one of them. She cast her ballot with help from her daughter, Elvia.

“It’s wonderful time for our country right now — Obama!” Reyes said as she waved a small American flag.

In the Little Saigon section of Los Angeles, Timothy Ngo, a Vietnamese immigrant, turned out to support McCain.

“I came here as a refugee, so Mr. McCain and I grew up and fought in the same war in Vietnam,” Ngo said.

Six in 10 voters picked the economy as the most important issue facing the nation, according to data from national exit polls examined by msnbc.com. Only 9 percent said terrorism was the most important issue.

Pessimism over the economy is usually a grim omen for the party in control of the White House. In the elections of 1992, 1980, 1960 and 1932, economic distress, to some degree, resulted in the party in control losing the White House.

Obama, McCain cast their ballotsObama and his wife, Michelle, voted with their young daughters at their sides at Beulah Shoesmith Elementary School in Hyde Park, Ill. The family was ushered inside ahead of a line of their neighbors that wrapped around the block.

Fellow voters watched in silence and snapped cell-phone pictures. They cheered when Obama held up his validation slip with a smile and said, “I voted.”

“The journey ends, but voting with my daughters, that was a big deal,” he told reporters later.

Obama’s final days of campaigning were bittersweet: He was mourning the loss of his grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, who helped raise him but died of cancer Sunday night and never got to see the results of the historic election.

In Delaware, Obama’s running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, went to the polls with his elderly mother. Speaking to reporters on his plane, Biden said he had made a deal with his wife, Jill.

“If you get the vice presidency and get elected, you can get a dog,” Biden said his wife told him. “I know what kind I want, [but] I don’t know what kind I’m going to get yet. We’re not there yet. The deal’s not closed yet.”

McCain, meanwhile, cast his ballot early Tuesday at a church near his home in central Phoenix. A small crowd cheered “Go, John, go!” and “We love you!” as he stepped out of a sport utility vehicle with his wife, Cindy. One person carried a sign that read, “Use your brain, vote McCain!”

Palin returned to where her political career began to cast her vote in the snow-dusted, two-story Wasilla City Hall where she once presided as a small-town mayor.

Palin, accompanied by her husband, Todd, voted just after 7 a.m. Tuesday, pushing aside a red, white and blue curtain on a voting booth and handing her white paper ballot to a clerk.

_________________I remember doing nothing on the night Sinatra died
And the night Jeff Buckley died
And the night Kurt Cobain died
And the night John Lennon died
I remember I stayed up to watch the news with everyone

so how many times in the next four years do you think we'll hear "white supremicists arrested following attempted assassination plot" ? ive ALREADY heard from one person (not really a "friend", more like an acquaintance) that "i can't believe we have a nigger for a president. someone needs to pop a cap in his ass" its going to be a long four years for him. i hope he has enough secret service shadowing him at all times.

He said that he laughed, too, when he listened to Sarah Palin’s descriptions of Obama “palling around with terrorists.” In fact, Ayers said that he knew Obama only slightly: “I think my relationship with Obama was probably like that of thousands of others in Chicago and, like millions and millions of others, I wished I knew him better.”

And this:

Ayers said that he had never meant to imply, in an interview with the Times, published coincidentally on 9/11, that he somehow wished he and the Weathermen had committed further acts of violence in the old days. Instead, he said, “I wish I had done more, but it doesn’t mean I wish we’d bombed more shit.” Ayers said that he had never been responsible for violence against other people and was acting to end a war in Vietnam in which “thousands of people were being killed every week.”

seriously...someone explain to me why obama is viewed as the anti christ by non supporters?

there are some angry people today.

I think a lot of the over the top anti-christ views stem entirely from the fact in some circles he is being portrayed as the second coming OF christ.

Also, a fear of socialism (especially in very uncertain economic times) and the (very) few idiot african americans who seem to think a black president means they are going to be given everything they want.

my sisters mother in law basically wrote my sister an email chewing her out and saying 233 years of democracy just went down the shitter. What?! really?!

Also, she reads, listens to, and would invite Hannity over for tea everyday if she could.

No, its not ignorance really... except those small few who dislike him based purely on race.

He has been portrayed in some respects as a Messiah of sorts. Its just backlash to that...

and i dont think anyone questions a lot of his policies are far closer to socialism than what some would like to see... especially the wealthy.. so to them, he is an anti-christ, because he openly admitted to redistributing their wealth.

This is one of those moments in history when it is worth pausing to reflect on the basic facts:

An American with the name Barack Hussein Obama, the son of a white woman and a black man he barely knew, raised by his grandparents far outside the stream of American power and wealth, has been elected the 44th president of the United States.

Showing extraordinary focus and quiet certainty, Mr. Obama swept away one political presumption after another to defeat first Hillary Clinton, who wanted to be president so badly that she lost her bearings, and then John McCain, who forsook his principles for a campaign built on anger and fear.

His triumph was decisive and sweeping, because he saw what is wrong with this country: the utter failure of government to protect its citizens. He offered a government that does not try to solve every problem but will do those things beyond the power of individual citizens: to regulate the economy fairly, keep the air clean and the food safe, ensure that the sick have access to health care, and educate children to compete in a globalized world.

Mr. Obama spoke candidly of the failure of Republican economic policies that promised to lift all Americans but left so many millions far behind. He committed himself to ending a bloody and pointless war. He promised to restore Americans’ civil liberties and their tattered reputation around the world.

With a message of hope and competence, he drew in legions of voters who had been disengaged and voiceless. The scenes Tuesday night of young men and women, black and white, weeping and cheering in Chicago and New York and in Atlanta’s storied Ebenezer Baptist Church were powerful and deeply moving.

Mr. Obama inherits a terrible legacy. The nation is embroiled in two wars — one of necessity in Afghanistan and one of folly in Iraq. Mr. Obama’s challenge will be to manage an orderly withdrawal from Iraq without igniting new conflicts so the Pentagon can focus its resources on the real front in the war on terror, Afghanistan.

The campaign began with the war as its central focus. By Election Day, Americans were deeply anguished about their futures and the government’s failure to prevent an economic collapse fed by greed and an orgy of deregulation. Mr. Obama will have to move quickly to impose control, coherence, transparency and fairness on the Bush administration’s jumbled bailout plan.

His administration will also have to identify all of the ways that Americans’ basic rights and fundamental values have been violated and rein that dark work back in. Climate change is a global threat, and after years of denial and inaction, this country must take the lead on addressing it. The nation must develop new, cleaner energy technologies, to reduce greenhouse gases and its dependence on foreign oil.

Mr. Obama also will have to rally sensible people to come up with immigration reform consistent with the values of a nation built by immigrants and refugees.

There are many other urgent problems that must be addressed. Tens of millions of Americans lack health insurance, including some of the country’s most vulnerable citizens — children of the working poor. Other Americans can barely pay for their insurance or are in danger of losing it along with their jobs. They must be protected.

Mr. Obama will now need the support of all Americans. Mr. McCain made an elegant concession speech Tuesday night in which he called on his followers not just to honor the vote, but to stand behind Mr. Obama. After a nasty, dispiriting campaign, he seemed on that stage to be the senator we long respected for his service to this country and his willingness to compromise.

That is a start. The nation’s many challenges are beyond the reach of any one man, or any one political party.

_________________No matter how dark the storm gets overheadThey say someone's watching from the calm at the edgeWhat about us when we're down here in it? We gotta watch our backs

seriously...someone explain to me why obama is viewed as the anti christ by non supporters?

there are some angry people today.

I think a lot of the over the top anti-christ views stem entirely from the fact in some circles he is being portrayed as the second coming OF christ.

Also, a fear of socialism (especially in very uncertain economic times) and the (very) few idiot african americans who seem to think a black president means they are going to be given everything they want.

I doubt he will give all of the power to the african american populace. he as the entire country to answer to.a small (or moderate perhaps) amount of socialist ideas have actually helped our country in the past (new deal anyone?). not that I endorse an entirely socialist economy, but try and keep an open mind folks.

seriously...someone explain to me why obama is viewed as the anti christ by non supporters?

there are some angry people today.

I think a lot of the over the top anti-christ views stem entirely from the fact in some circles he is being portrayed as the second coming OF christ.

Also, a fear of socialism (especially in very uncertain economic times) and the (very) few idiot african americans who seem to think a black president means they are going to be given everything they want.

I doubt he will give all of the power to the african american populace. he as the entire country to answer to.a small (or moderate perhaps) amount of socialist ideas have actually helped our country in the past (new deal anyone?). not that I endorse an entirely socialist economy, but try and keep an open mind folks.

I agree. I dont think he will either. I am just answering 62strats question why SOME view him as an anti-christ.

so how many times in the next four years do you think we'll hear "white supremicists arrested following attempted assassination plot" ? ive ALREADY heard from one person (not really a "friend", more like an acquaintance) that "i can't believe we have a nigger for a president. someone needs to pop a cap in his ass" its going to be a long four years for him. i hope he has enough secret service shadowing him at all times.

ya I hope he doesn't visit Dallas. I would certainly greet him, but folks at Dealy plaza may not be so kind.

so, will the president-elect obama haters support him no matter what, like they said we all needed to support president bush the same way?

In the sea of ridiculous facebook statuses of certain friends, these two were the only ones I halfway respect:

Elizabeth Willard is I hope Obama proves me wrong and makes a good president.Brent Hill is going to do for Obama that which Democrats would never do for Bush.... give him a fair chance to do something good before I start bitching about him.

so, will the president-elect obama haters support him no matter what, like they said we all needed to support president bush the same way?

I've said and continue to believe that Obama is going to have at his disposal the absolute best minds that the government and the private sector have to offer. He has infinite possibilities in front of him to be a significant agent of positive change in American politics and government. If he makes good on this opportunity and gets America back on a positive path, he will gain support from some McCain supporters. There will be hold outs that will never support him no matter what, but the opportunity to excel is his for the taking.

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 4 guests

You cannot post new topics in this forumYou cannot reply to topics in this forumYou cannot edit your posts in this forumYou cannot delete your posts in this forumYou cannot post attachments in this forum